It's quite an elaborate scheme
by Peer of the realm of Tarragon
Summary: Harriet Potter was bored and something interesting was happening in the woods on the night of the full moon. She couldn't just ignore it, especially since she was all but sure that her neighbours, the Gilberts, were somehow involved in all of this. (Possible Klaus/Fem!Harry or Elijah/Fem!Harry, Dark-ish humour, Casual Necromancy)
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. And Prudence.**

* * *

To be honest, Harriet should have realised what was up back when she'd first seen the blond boy climb in through Elena's window. But she'd been incredibly new to the place back then and didn't think it quite her place to rat the girl out to her aunt for the simple crime of having boys over.

Also, a part of her assumed it was some American thing. She saw it a lot in those high school movies they had in this country, throwing rocks at the window until the girl opens it to let the boy in. Did they even have high school movies back home?

Well, it's not like she would know, she thought bitterly. By the time she'd had the free time to go to watch a film in the theatres back home, the stalkers had been there. The Muggleborns who had seen her photo in the free introductory pamphlets adorning many a rack at Flourish and Blotts around July, with her standing with Hogwarts behind her frowning most frightfully with the tag reading 'The Saviour'. A photo that had not been taken or used with her consent, one that they had to develop using muggle methods because otherwise she kept running out of the frame.

Wankers.

But yes, she should have reported the boy way back then. Or when she saw Elena kissing another guy on the porch, one who looked far too old for her and if the whispers making their rounds at the tea parties were to believed, was the blond boy's brother, or when people kept dropping like flies. And now, if the exsanguinated body she came across while trekking through the woods was anything to go by, vampires.

And not very subtle ones either. Knowing Sanguini and how he made a game of draining the most amount of people and then hiding the bodies in 'accidents' just to see if anyone realised what was going on, or even Prudence whose kill count wasn't even hidden but instead thought to be the work of a serial killer due to the macabre tableaus she turned them into, it kind of made these vampires look amateurish. There was no finesse there whatsoever.

But then she supposed the different ties between magic and magical creatures in this country changed things. And their vampires were created out of muggles and wiccans rather than True Witches so there was that. She had heard tales of how their vampires had been created through the perversion of an immortality spell. Meanwhile vampires like Sanguini were created through a Necromancer who had played with Blood Magic a bit too much. She knew that garlic had been heavily involved in the potion the Necromancer had been trying to create and thus grew the aversion to the same in her vampires. These ones had no such aversion to garlic.

And her kind of vampires weren't sterile. Sanguini's repeated polite requests that she bear his children made that obvious. Probably because they weren't actually dead, just...sort of cannibals.

But vampires in her backyard. Literally, seeing as how her house was right next to a forest.

With a sigh she took off, trudging through the forest. She could feel some magical resonance from somewhere and it was only a matter of time until she finally reached it.

She found Elena, Jenna and some other woman, dead and heart ripped out, in circles of fire while a woman chanted and another man stood nearby, looking at them hungrily while squeezing what appeared to the the third woman's heart. When Harriet stepped out of the forest into the light they all turned to her, Elena and Jenna yelling at her to get out of there while the man and the chanting woman, probably a wiccan, shared a glance.

The wiccan waved her hand in Harriet's direction and she felt a gust of wind that would have swept her off her feet and into one of the trees had Harriet not batted it away with a flick of her finger. She must have put too much power into it though because instead of just deflecting the 'wind' she ended up deforesting a good strip of land.

"Oops!" She cringed. She'd forgotten about the power surges that came when she hadn't used her magic in a while. "Oh, carry on, I'm just here to observe. This is just incredibly nostalgic." She wheezed out a laugh.

But the wiccan just stared at her with her mouth open.

"Harriet, what are you doing?" Elena screamed.

"Call it an intellectual curiosity, usually the type of magic I see is powerful enough that the sacrifices can be limited to a literal pound of flesh and a bit of enemy's blood. This is vaguely reminiscent but at the same time, very new. But I mean when magic is weak it has to be augmented by sacrifices, that's just how it goes. You get back what you put in and this wiccan can't exactly put in that much so..." The wiccan drew herself up at that, clearly furious and Harriet realised she had offended her, "No offense meant, I'm sure you're powerful enough compared to others like you, but you're not quite up to my level. Carry on."

The man opened his pretty pillow lip mouth to speak but closed it just as fast. He nodded at the witch but before she could resume chanting, the blond boy Elena liked appeared at the top of the cliff.

"I don't recall you being on the guest list." The man said and Harriet stared in amazement.

"Bloody hell, blondie's a vampire too? That makes the sneaking in through the window even more creepy." The man turned to her annoyed and she held up her hands, "Sorry about that, I didn't mean to steal your thunder."

He did the vampire speed walk to the cliff and then it was just the four of them women there. He returned quickly enough, pausing to stake the blond boy in the back before making dramatic speeches about goddesses being sacrificed at the altar and what not. Harry always wondered about that, rituals and sacrifices tended to be the same, always done by firelight with daggers, very often in graveyards for some reason. With the exception of Blaise Zabini's mother whose sacrifices were conducted in her ritual room with its stainless steel tables and stone tiles to reduce cleanup and specially crafted goblin-made scalpels, everyone seemed to want to create an atmosphere rather than be precise the way they really should.

If Harriet's magic ever got weak enough to need sacrifices she hoped to follow in Callidora Zabini's footsteps.

The ritual was interrupted again when Jenna bit the wiccan but they carried on ,Pillow Lips staking her through the heart. Blond boy and Elena's dramatic overtures were boring her and suddenly Harriet was very glad that it had only been Pettigrew and Voldemort there back when he'd come back to life. Interruptions and uninvited guests ended up dead, this much she had learnt from Cedric's presence back in the third task.

Meanwhile, Elena had been killed too and Pillow Lips was ecstatically yelling at the skies.

And then finally, Harriet got really interested as Pillow Lips started transforming like a werewolf.

A hybrid! She hadn't seen one of those yet.

And then Blond boy's brother snapped the wiccan's neck and another wiccan began some sort of pain spell that caused Pillow Lips to begin screaming and twisting in pain.

She'd have to look it up later. Since Harriet built up her immunity to the Crucio she'd been looking to test her pain tolerance with other spells. This one looked plenty painful, she might actually feel it!

The next thing she knew, Elena's body was gone, Blond boy's brother was gone, the new wiccan-Harriet was pretty sure that was Benny, Elena's friend- and Blond boy were screaming when some other man rushed off with Pillow Lips.

"Even by sacrifice ritual standards, that was pretty dramatic."

Benny rushed at her, angry, "You just stood there, why didn't you do anything?!"

"Why would I? Jenna's the only one of them I actually gave the slightest bit of a fuck about."

"And you did nothing to save her!"

"Of course not, I was interested to see the ritual. Besides, she didn't seem like she'd be able to cope with the whole vampirism thing so it was best to let it happen and deal with it now."

"What do you mean deal with it?"

Harriet stepped over to the body that was once Jenna. She pulled the stake out and tapped her index finger on Jenna's forehead, shoulders, sternum and the side of her hips. The body came alive once again, heart beating, lungs breathing, human and all. The only left to do was to stick her soul back in.

Harriet rubbed the stone in her ring and summoned the Jenna's spirit. Benny and Blond boy were still there although terrified beyond belief, literally, all Benny was saying was that she couldn't believe this was happening.

"What's going on?" Jenna's spirit asked, looking down to see her body, "Is that me? But-I died! Didn't I?"

"Weeeell, yes. But I couldn't let it just stay that way." Harriet said and shushed Benny, who's prayer like chants of 'Oh my God!' were getting very annoying. "Give me your hand." Harriet commanded and the spirit did just that.

After that it was a simple matter of stuffing the spirit back into the body.

Jenna woke with a start, gasping for breath, looking around terrified before finally fainting at the sight of the hole in her shirt courtesy of a stake. Benny and Blond boy picked her up and left.

Harriet could only throw her hands into the air and roll her eyes.

"You're welcome!"

Americans were just so very rude.

* * *

oOo


	2. Chapter 2

oOo

* * *

Harriet Apparated back to her home, too tired to walk all the way back. She really needed to get back in shape, Oliver would have killed her before killing himself if he were to see his once star seeker in such poor form. She switched on the lights in her drawing room and lit the fire as well, she'd be needing it soon enough. From the window she could see into the Gilbert residence where Elena, Jenna and the Gilbert boy, Jonathan? Jack? No, no, it was the same name as that tall chap in Top Gear...Jeremy! The three were hugging it out. The three were clinging to one another while their friends watched on.

Harriet remembered that moment from her own life. It lost its charm when Hermione decided to use a picture of them hugging to remind people of her connections so that she could get a bill to emancipate House elves to pass in the Wizengamot.

She left them to enjoy it while it lasted. As with the honeymoon periods in all other things, this too would pass.

Besides she had much better things to do. Like write Sanguini a letter.

 _Sanguini,_

 _You wouldn't believe the scene I stumbled upon this night. And before you ignore this letter thinking it's me talking about some silly Muggle thing, I'd like to say that the story ends with the creation of a werewolf and vampire hybrid._

 _Now that I have your attention, let me proceed. As you might know, tonight is the full moon and I found a body in the forest which had all the blood sucked out of it and two puncture wounds on the neck-_

She went on to explain every single thing she had seen, making careful note of the chants and sacrifices used in the ritual and adding little samples of the ingredients she had found, the ash from the fire circles, the crystalline powder and more. The letter was soon sealed in wax, her Peverell and Black rings pressed into it so Sanguini wouldn't just chuck it into the bin like he did most letters and wrote the address of his castle in Floo powder infused ink.

She really adored this method of sending letters, it was so convenient that she wondered why everyone didn't do that and why it was something she only heard about when pondering international Wizarding mail.

Once the ink dried she tossed it into the fireplace, the fire lighting up with the bright green of transmission. She kept a watch, international letters took longer to floo and when the fire finally turned back to its normal yellow orange glow she knew the letter had gone through.

Which was good because she could see the Blond vampire walking down her driveway.

Before he could ring the bell and disturb Hedwig who had just gone through one of her Burning days (bringing her back to life and upgrading her to a moon Phoenix was the best decision Harriet had ever made), she went down the stairs herself, throwing the door open.

"Blondie."

"The name's Stefan. May I come in?"

"Oh you couldn't, my house is warded against any vampires who aren't Sanguini or Prudence."

Blondie, or Stefan as she now knew him to be, frowned in confusion. "I'd like to ask you some questions about what you did back there."

"And I'd like to ask you some questions about your parents' sex life."

"What?" If possible, he looked even more confused.

"I don't _want_ to answer any questions you might have. It comes under the umbrella of family secrets and is an inappropriate question to ask in the same way that me asking if your mother liked to be spanked while riding your father's cock might be an inappropriate question." The frown turned into a growl and Harriet sighed, leaning against the doorway with the ease of someone way, _way_ more powerful than the opponent. "Do remember that what I gave, I can take back."

He stilled. Part of her felt a bit of pity for the boy. On the one hand, while it was family magic, she would very willingly discuss it in her Necromancer circles so it wasn't _that_ much of a secret.

On the other hand, he was just a plain old wannabe 'vegetarian vampire' and that bored her. She could already see it in her head, the type of questions he would ask, 'How did you do that?', 'I've never seen anything like, it before?' 'Why did you wait until the last moment to intervene?', 'Don't you have a conscience?'.

He wouldn't ask the important questions like Sanguini, Prudence or even Marceau would, like 'What did Jenna's spirit feel like?' or, 'You saved a muggle?! Seriously?'

"Okay but why didn't you try to save Elena?"

"You mean apart from the fact that your brother ran off with the body?" She was actually surprised that he asked the question. Maybe not so boring after all. "Well, mostly because I could feel that it was tethered to something at the other end. I'm guessing her uncle?"

He was the Gilbert missing from the touching reunion after all.

"Elena's adopted, he was her biological father."

"Makes sense, the stronger the connection, the easier it is to pull a Frankenstein." Did it count as a Frankenstein if Elena's body wasn't a mishmash of scavenged body parts though? Eurgh, literary references were never her forte. Harriet stifled a yawn and turned to Stefan "Are we done here? Because I want to sleep."

"Be seeing you." The boy said cryptic and almost menacing. She wanted to applaud him for the effort. It was still only a three out of ten though.

Voldemort and Dumbledore had ruined her for foreshadowing and cryptic talk. No one else even came close to surpassing them in that.

* * *

"Where are they?" Elijah asked and Klaus was annoyed at his brother's one track mind. After a thousand years Klaus was finally, finally free, and living the way he was meant to, his hybrid form that had been locked up by their mother dear for so long and all Elijah could talk about was the family. Klaus may have hidden them away for the last ninety years but he remembered Elijah tying him to that post so that the curse could be laid on him making him live his torture for a millennia.

He'd have to remind his brother of that. It seemed he had forgotten.

But before he could snap out an answer, whether to pacify him or to rile him up, a ball of fire appearing next to them startled them. The flames were blue and even as Klaus looked at it, he found himself wondering how such a flame even happened to burn so naturally. Surely, this wasn't normal?

A squawk broke him out of his thoughts and Elijah stepped back, "What is that?" His brother whispered and Klaus followed his line of sight to find himself peering at the oddly owl like eyes staring back at him from within the ball of flame. The flames died down to a flicker and he found himself looking at a bird. It looked like a normal barn owl but its feathers ended in the same white flames that had once engulfed it.

 _Phoenix_ , he thought, but that didn't make sense. Magical creatures didn't exist, he knew that. Even if that fact that Esther had taught him was a lie, he hadn't come across a single such creature in his thousand years so he knew it to be true, as much legend as the Curse of the Sun and Moon that they'd perpetuated.

It squawked and lifted its leg and Klaus found a letter attached to it which was just... How did it not burn? How did the bird know where to take it?

And who the hell used a bird with mythological properties as a messenger pigeon?

"Is this a prank you're playing?" Elijah asked of him his eyes flicking between him and the owl, jaw tense.

The owl and Klaus snorted in perfect synchronisation. It squawked, a sceptical, arrogant sound if he had ever heard one and Klaus echoed the bird's disbelief with his words, "You give my imagination and the witches in my pocket too much credit to think I could make such a wondrous animal a reality."

Now the owl-phoenix shot him a look and Klaus could almost hear it talk to him, chiding him for his glibness, telling him to stop flattering it. Or, judging by the many flecks of black-blue adorning its body, characteristic of the female of the snowy owl species that it seemed to loosely belong to,telling him to stop flattering _her_.

Would make sense if it was female. His terrible luck with women was legendary.

"May I?" He asked of the owl-phoenix, and she hooted as he took the letter from her. A ball of flames engulfed her again and when it flickered out there was no one there.

"What does it say?" Elijah asked.

"Patience dear brother," Klaus said and looked over the envelope. The paper was heavy, reminding him of the vellum he once used, a rich colour like that of clotted cream. It was sealed in wax with two coat of arms pressed into it.

' _Toujours Pur',_ read one of the crests with ravens and stars decorating it. The other was a far more plain one, barely a crest, more a symbol. A circle and a line inscribed in a triangle, but it was the words that threw him off. It was like no family motto he had ever read. ' _The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death'._ Who would send them such a letter?

Klaus slid his finger under the flap, breaking the seal and Elijah leaned forward in anticipation. It had been a while since they had dealt with someone outside of their family as a threat. While the Mystic Falls crew were something of a threat, they weren't exactly...interesting. Witches causing pain, humans striking deals, vampires falling in love, it was all very mundane. This was new, this was exciting, _thrilling_. The paper inside held the same vellum like quality and Klaus unfolded the letter with no small amount of excitement. But as he read the chicken scratch handwriting he grew numb with disbelief.

" _Dear Pillow Lips Hybrid and the Man who saved him from the pain spell,_

 _You are both cordially invited to dinner at Steven's Quarry, Sunday, May 2nd. Blood shall be provided so please do not bring your own blood-bags/human juice boxes._

 _Sincerely,_

 _Harriet Peverell-Potter-Black_

 _P.S.: RSVP not required_

 _P.P.S: RSVP not required because I will find you and kidnap you if you don't show up."_

Harriet Peverell-Potter-Black, that was quite a mouthful. But now he had a name to go with the face and power of the witch who had 'observed' his curse being broken. "Well Elijah, looks like we have plans this Sunday."

* * *

oOo


End file.
